Episodes

  • S4E15 To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: A Conversation with Dr. Benjamin Nathans

    S4E15 To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: A Conversation with Dr. Benjamin Nathans
    Nov 20 2024
    In this episode of Madison’s Notes, host Laura Laurent sits down with historian Benjamin Nathans to explore his groundbreaking new book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement. Nathans offers a deep dive into the history of Soviet dissent, tracing the courageous efforts of Soviet citizens who risked everything to challenge the system from within, spanning from Stalin’s death to the collapse of communism. By invoking the very laws of the Kremlin, these dissidents exposed the regime’s internal contradictions, playing a pivotal role in its eventual downfall. The discussion focuses on key figures in this movement, from well-known Nobel laureates like Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to lesser-known but equally vital contributors. Nathans also touches on the broader implications of their struggles for modern authoritarian societies today. Benjamin Nathans, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a distinguished expert in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, Jewish history, and the history of human rights. His previous acclaimed works include Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter With Late Imperial Russia. Nathans is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and is recognized for his expertise on Russian and Eastern European history. Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    52 mins
  • Masha Kirasirova, "The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    Masha Kirasirova, "The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)
    Nov 19 2024
    In the first few years after the Russian Revolution, an ideological project coalesced to link the development of what Stalin demarcated as the internal "East"—primarily Central Asia and the Caucasus—with nation-building, the overthrow of colonialism, and progress toward socialism in the "foreign East"—the Third World. Support for anti-colonial movements abroad was part of the Communist Party platform and shaped Soviet foreign policy to varying degrees thereafter. The Eastern International: Arabs, Central Asians, and Jews in the Soviet Union's Anticolonial Empire (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Masha Kirasirova explores how the concept of "the East" was used by the world's first communist state and its mediators to project, channel, and contest power across Eurasia. Dr. Kirasirova traces how this policy was conceptualised and carried out by students, comrades, and activists—Arab, Jewish, and Central Asian. It drew on their personal motivations and gave them considerable access to state authority and agency to shape Soviet ideology, inform concrete decisions, and allocate resources. Contextualising these Eastern mediators within a global frame, this book historicizes the circulation of peoples and ideas between the socialist and decolonizing world and reinscribes Soviet history into postcolonial studies and global history. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • J. Arch Getty and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Reflections on Stalinism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2024)

    J. Arch Getty and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Reflections on Stalinism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2024)
    Nov 16 2024
    In this episode, Alisa talks with Lewis H. Siegelbaum, who, along with J. Arch Getty, edited Reflections on Stalinism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2024), a collection of essays by twelve prominent scholars in the field who, after decades of study, reflect on the 'hows' and 'whys' of Stalinism as an authoritarian dictatorship determined to build a version of socialism in the Soviet Union at all costs. The conversation explores the impetus behind the collection and its development, thematic approaches to studying Stalinism, memories of traveling to Soviet archives, and even reflections on mortality. Other NBN episodes mentioned in this podcast include: Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, hosted by Sean Guillory; Stuck on Communism: Memoir of a Russian Historian by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, hosted by Steven Seegel; To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans, hosted by Marshall Poe. Alisa Kuzmina is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Cultural Cold War history, with a focus on Soviet and American marriage policies and the social-cultural norms surrounding them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    47 mins
  • S4E14 Our Enemies Will Vanish: A Conversation with Yaroslav Trofimov

    S4E14 Our Enemies Will Vanish: A Conversation with Yaroslav Trofimov
    Nov 13 2024
    Join us as we discuss Yaroslav Trofimov’s recent publication, Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024). We dive into the history of his journalism, the personal account of his reporting, and the ongoing war on Ukraine. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In this authoritative account, he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the grueling and bloody arm wrestle involving the Wagner group over Bakhmut—to show how Ukraine and its allies have turned the tide against Russia, one of the world’s great military powers, in a modern-day battle of David and Goliath. For Trofimov, this war is deeply personal. He grew up in Kyiv and his family has lived there for generations. In his book, with deep empathy and local understanding, Trofimov tells the story of how everyday Ukrainian citizens—doctors, computer programmers, businesspeople, and schoolteachers—risked their lives and lost loved ones. He blends their brave and tragic stories with expert military analysis, providing unique insight into the thinking of Ukrainian leadership and mapping out the decisive stages of what has become a perilous war for Ukraine, the Putin regime, and indeed, the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    45 mins
  • Ali Igmen, "Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2012)

    Ali Igmen, "Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2012)
    Nov 13 2024
    In this episode, Alisa talks with Ali İğmen, Professor of Central Asian History and the Director of the Oral History Program at California State University. In his book Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan, Dr. İğmen examines Soviet Russia’s efforts to reshape local Kyrgyz culture into Soviet culture, as well as the ways in which the local Kyrgyz responded to these attempts. This is the first English-language study of Soviet culture clubs in Kyrgyzstan, which profoundly influenced the future of Kyrgyz cultural identity and helped foster the work of many artists, including the renowned novelist Chingiz Aitmatov. The film mentioned in the episode is The First Teacher, a 1965 drama directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, based on Chinghiz Aitmatov's book of the same name. The project Alisa refers to is Можно без политики? (Can We Do It Without Politics?) which traces the political implications of culture in an authoritarian society. Alisa Kuzmina is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Cultural Cold War history, with a focus on Soviet and American marriage policies and the social-cultural norms surrounding them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    47 mins
  • Karine Rashkovsky, "An Improbable Life: My Father's Escape from Soviet Russia" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2024)

    Karine Rashkovsky, "An Improbable Life: My Father's Escape from Soviet Russia" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2024)
    Nov 5 2024
    From evading the KGB and disassembling a downed American plane to narrowly escaping a life sentence in Siberia, Reuven Rashkovsky’s story is a gripping tale of coming of age, searching for belonging, and daring to escape the tightly controlled Soviet regime. Relayed in his point of view by his daughter, Dr. Karine Rashkovsky, An Improbable Life: My Father's Escape from Soviet Russia (Cherry Orchard Books, 2024) tells the story of a man who has been at the center of some of the most dramatic and tumultuous events in modern history, from World War II to the Six-Day War to the collapse of the USSR, providing insight into the world of Soviet Jewry and the almost insurmountable obstacles to getting out. Filled with quirky, revealing anecdotes, An Improbable Life is a valuable historical resource for anyone intrigued by culture and identity in the Soviet Union from the last days of Stalin to the Brezhnev era and the paradox and perils of being outcast—and possibly heroic—in that time and place. With the return of a totalitarian, imperialist Russia, Rashkovsky’s story is all too relevant to today’s struggles. Here is an improbable true story of what can indeed, be possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    42 mins
  • Peter Sarandinaki, "In Search of the Romanovs: A Family's Quest to Solve One of History's Most Brutal Crimes" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

    Peter Sarandinaki, "In Search of the Romanovs: A Family's Quest to Solve One of History's Most Brutal Crimes" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
    Oct 26 2024
    In Search of the Romanovs: A Family's Quest to Solve One of History's Most Brutal Crimes (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) is a thrilling, true-life detective story about the search for the missing members of the Romanov royal family, murdered by Bolsheviks in 1918, and one family's involvement in the hundred-year-old forensic investigation into their deaths, clandestine burials, and the recovery and authentication of the remains. Peter Sarandinaki is a retired sea captain now living in Toms River, New Jersey, with his wife. He is the great-grandson of Lieutenant General Sergei Nikolaevich Rozanov, the White Army commander in the eastern Amur region of Russia who was among the first men to enter the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where the Romanovs were murdered. Sarandinaki has worked on the Romanov case for more than thirty years. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    43 mins
  • Larry E. Holmes, "Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985" (Indiana UP, 2024)

    Larry E. Holmes, "Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921–1985" (Indiana UP, 2024)
    Oct 25 2024
    In Win or Else: Soviet Football in Moscow and Beyond, 1921-1985 (Indiana University Press, 2024), Larry E. Holmes shows us how Soviet football culture regularly disregarded official ideological and political imperatives and skirted the boundaries between socialism and capitalism. In the early 1920s, the Soviet press denounced football as a bourgeois sport that was injurious to both mind and body. Within that same decade, however, it blew up, becoming the most popular spectator sport in the USSR and growing into a fiercely competitive business with complex regional and national bureaucracies, a strong international presence, and a conviction that victory on the field was also a victory of Soviet supremacy. Writing as both historian and fan, Holmes focuses his study on the provincial Kirov team Dinamo from 1979 to 1985, when the club played at both its worst and its best. Spurred by a dismal 1979 season, the team's administrators and regional authorities had two options: obey Moscow's edict to reduce expenditures on professional sports or seek out new—and often illicit—funding sources to fill out a team of champions. Drawing on rich archival materials as well as newspapers and interviews with former players, Win or Else reveals the foundations of Soviet sports culture—and the hazards that teams faced both in victory and in loss. Larry E. Holmes was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Alabama. Holmes passed away on November 30, 2022, in Kirov, Russia. Editor Samantha Lomb is Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Vyatka State University in Kirov, Russia. She is author of Stalin's Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
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    41 mins